5 methods to help leaders influence positive change

Being in a leadership position in the 21st century carries a different set of requirements than it once did. The world has changed. Over the past 50 years, there has been an exponential increase in the degree of complexity we are required to compute in order to make sense of the world, and in order to make sense as leaders trying to have a positive influence on the world and our organisations. Where factory style, top-down leadership according to predictable plans were once useful, now they aren’t. Leaders end up with bottlenecks, and the world is changing so fast that adaptiveness replaces pure planning and empowering leadership replaces authoritarianism. The rules of the game have changed. Here are 5 methods to help you play the game better.

Adopting multiple perspectives

Navigating complexity requires embracing paradox. In a predictable world, we could stick to our guns and have a narrow perspective throughout life. In a globalised world where change is constant, we need to be able to adopt and integrate multiple perspectives into our decision-making. Where things used to seem right or wrong, black or white, the leaders of the 21st century need to be able to embrace paradox and see things as right and wrong, black and white. To see things from the perspectives of different people with different points of view.

Doing this often requires somebody else to ask us to look around a situation, to intentionally take on different points of view and try on different glasses. More lenses at our disposal. That’s what a great coach can help us generate.

Observe your self objectively

We’d like to think that we make optimal decisions but looking at external data points and then coming to the perfect answer. In reality, things aren’t that simple. We have an inner world that governs us far more than we’re aware of or care to admit. We are governed by thoughts we don’t notice we’re having, feelings we aren’t aware are there, cognitive biases that are too deep into the brain stem to be conscious and past trauma that we can’t remember. We say we have feelings, but in reality, our feelings often have us. 

Learning to notice our inner worlds is the first step towards being able to regain some purchase over it. We just often benefit from a guide to go there.

Lead with people.

Old fashioned management used to assume that simply telling somebody what to do would somehow lead to them magically doing it. In reality, we know of several behavioural insights such as ‘Reactance’ (we often go against what we are told to do) that show this not to be the case. Furthermore, when we direct we make several big errors. One is that this only works if we are right, what if the group has a better answer? This is an opportunity cost. Second is that when we direct others, we use an extrinsic motivation logic which is like a hungry beast whereby people only do things if the carrot or stick are well enough design. 

The opportunity here is to help somebody to switch on their intrinsic motivation system. And once that is ON, there is no stopping that fire from burning and we find we are constantly surprised by the energy people bring. Finally, when we tell people what to do, the maths don’t workout. Because after we solve this problem for them, we move onto a new problem. Problems almost multiply. When we lead with people, and stand by them as supportive coaches, we find that they solve how they solve problems. They increase their capacity for problem solving in the future. Working with a coach makes this reality all too obvious. 

We now have a role model to replicate in our own unique way.

Listen

This brings me to perhaps the most important skill of them all. Listen. I would say simply listen but for many of us, it’s not all that simple. Yet when we are really heard, we tend to hear ourselves better in the process. We notice our true thoughts and feelings emerge. Insights we didn’t know we had suddenly emerge with absolute clarity. Equally, when we hear ourselves out loud, we hear the flaws in our thinking, or how we’re influenced (for good and/or bad) by our feelings. Listening in this sense is a super power. It is the multiplier. Something that can save lives, improve our socio-emotional capacities and importantly increase our cognitive performance as we think through problems with a trusted partner. Working with a coach who is a trained psychotherapist offers an experience of being heard that is a step change from what many of ever get to experience in our lives. And as such offers us a perspective on a form of leadership that we can look to emulate and be inspired by.

Be your self

Finally, perhaps the most common source of effectiveness we hear from our coachees, is that working with a coach who is a trained psychotherapist helped them to know themselves, and become themselves. A form of self-acceptance that leads to a different kind of confidence. Not a superficial strutting around looking to be liked by everybody and anybody, but inner strength and stillness, a groundedness that says “I might not be totally sure about everything we’re working on, I might not be perfect, but I am sure of who I am”. That kind of self-knowledge is a walking permission slip for others to stop pretending and to therefore reduce one big secret waste in organisations: that most people are doing jobs: 1/ their job; 2/ trying not to get caught out for being imperfect. That second one is costly. I mean literally in terms of time, cognitive load, burnout as well as lost potential). Working with a coach who is a trained psychotherapist helps us know ourselves in a way that can ease that load, so we can actually get to work.

If you’re looking to become more effective as a leader, as somebody who is working with complexity and people, getting a coach who can work with you in a deeper way, is a sure way to sharpen the one tool we all really have to work with: ourselves.

By incorporating these methods into your leadership culture, you’ll see an increase in your organisation’s ability to navigate the chaos of the 21st century. You’ll see an increase in team effectiveness, efficiency and just as importantly, employee engagement. A workplace that uses the methods above is a workplace that is inspiring and engaging to be in because it operates by a new logic, one that places human growth at the centre of things, and see’s performance increase from there. This logic is one that not only retains top talent but also attracts it. Having access to coaching services with trained psychotherapists very much puts this growth logic front and centre.

So if you’re looking to make your leadership culture fit for purpose and retain and attract leaders who can adapt as the world continues to change around them, we’d love to speak to you.